


The Shadow Wears A Familiar Face

by Dikhotomia



Series: Whumptober 2k19: FE3H Edition [3]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Byleth has a no good very bad day, Canon-Typical Violence, Day Three Delirium, Gen, Hallucinations, I'll be using that tag a lot, Poison, and in turn everyone else around her does too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 12:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20930216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: "There's someone else on the throne, elbows on knees and head bowed as if in prayer, white gloves stained red with blood. There's blood everywhere, pooled on the steps and drizzling between them, spreading out dangerously towards where she stands, to where the figure sits. Her voice fails her when she tries to call out, or the sound is swallowed by the air around her.But the figure looks up, pale skin stained red, violet eyes pinning her down with a murderous glare. The figure speaks, and the words echo in her mind, voice familiar but not."ORThe mission that went awry, and the Professor that suffers for it.





	The Shadow Wears A Familiar Face

**Author's Note:**

> This jumps around a bit and isn't very coherent, but neither is Byleth.

The darkness is familiar, inky and silent, spilling around her feet and tangling around her limbs. But today she feels like lead, arms and legs and head weighed down and leaving her unsteady, waiting for the chiding voice of the girl that occupies her unconscious hours -- and some of her waking ones -- to filter through and tell her everything she did wrong.

_Wrong?_

There's a disconnect in her mind, a shard of missing information that she can't find even when she searches, reaches through the inky darkness to replay the moments that had lead her to this place. It's not a dream, but she's not awake --

She hangs, suspended somewhere in limbo, asleep but awake.

Unaware. Numb.

_She wants to know what she's missing-_

There's someone else on the throne, elbows on knees and head bowed as if in prayer, white gloves stained red with blood. There's blood everywhere, pooled on the steps and drizzling between them, spreading out dangerously towards where she stands, to where the figure sits. Her voice fails her when she tries to call out, or the sound is swallowed by the air around her.

But the figure looks up, pale skin stained red, violet eyes pinning her down with a murderous glare. The figure speaks, and the words echo in her mind, voice familiar but not.

_You betrayed me, you betrayed us._

She doesn't understand, confusion twisting into anxiety, head shaking. _I don't know what you mean._

_Look at them._

There's bodies on the floor, on the stairs, people whose faces she thinks she should recognize. That she thinks she knows; a boy whose intellect is astounding but is always sleeping, a girl who struggles with the day to day but tries constantly to conquer her fears, a man whose loyalty has reached a level of devotion she can't fathom, a girl whose words are sometimes jumbled but her heart is always in the right place. She knows them, she knows them all.

She knows the figure on the throne, the one who stands at the head of them all, aloof and distant but kind and caring all at once.

_They died for you._

_You failed them._

_\--Failed **me**._

She drowns.

\------

The world comes back in an explosion of chaos and fire in her veins originating from somewhere on her side. She can't see straight, colors and faces swimming through her vision, voices distant and filled with worry. She can't make sense of what happened, her mind a haze of moments and conversations that could have been real or fake or imagined. She tries to speak past the burn in her lungs and her throat, feels the breath she takes sawing through her chest.

A face swims into view, green hair and eyes, words murmured and nonsensical.

"--Poison." she hears, eyes roving between the woman kneeling over her to the owner of the voice. 

The figure on the throne stands there, red stained but this time worried, the murderous glare in her eyes replaced with one of fear.

She panics, a high and thready sound catching in her throat as she tries to move, tries to get away from the red stained figure whose name she wants to remember, whose worry and fear some part of her screams at her to soothe. But all that floods her mind is the accusation, the bodies, the blood and it feels like a part of her tears away at the look of hurt that flashes across the girl's face before she backs away.

Before she disappears into the haze that still eats away at the corners of her vision.

"She's--delirious--" 

Voices cut in and out, and her consciousness rolls with the slide of her gaze, the woman still above her speaks, low and reassuring. Someone else she should but doesn't recognize looms behind the green haired woman, speaking to both of them.

She blacks out the second he lifts her, the pain becoming white hot and all consuming.

\-------

_ **She drowns.** _

\-------

In her dreams the figure on the throne leers, slipping between the shadows and speaking to her with words she can't hear but can feel. Touches her with bloodstained hands that smear her skin and sink into her clothes. She --_ It_, she tells herself, _that thing isn't human_ \-- makes promises, threats, continues to wear the mask of the girl with the hurt in her eyes and the fear in her voice.

_Edelgard_, she remembers,_ her name is Edelgard._

The figure's smile is gleefully malevolent.

\-------

She wakes to the stiffness of laying in one position too long, to an ache that throbs dully in her side and nerves still sensitive from the poison working it's way out of her system. She remembers now, the mission, the ambush, the demonic beast with jaws that yawned impossibly wide and dripped venom with every snap of teeth. She it bearing down on Rhea, fangs flashing, the archbishop trapped by a bandit's axe grinding down on her buckler, watching with horror in her eyes as the beast advanced with intent to kill.

She remembers the moment fangs tore into her instead and the pain that sparked with it, remembers the terrified sound of Edelgard's voice as she screamed her name.

"Oh," she says aloud to the empty room, voice rough from misuse.

_Oh_, parrots the figure wearing Edelgard's face, sitting casually on the foot of her bed.

She panics.

\------

She's not in her room this time (was she ever?), blinking awake to warmth and company. She sees Rhea sitting at her desk, bent over, quill scratching against paper. Edelgard sits in the only other chair in the room, blanket wrapped around her, sleeping. It's one of the few times she's ever seen the two together like this.

"Lady Rhea?" she rasps, coughing once when the words catch rough in her throat.

"Professor," Rhea murmurs as she rises from her seat, quill forgotten on the journal laying open on the desk. "How are you feeling?" She notices the way the Archbishop lingers a few feet from the side of the bed, almost as if in fear of an attack. It rattles something loose in her chest, makes her frown.

"Better," she offers, stilling when her attempt to sit up makes Rhea flinch. "I'm...sorry." She doesn't know what it is she's apologizing for, but the blank space in her head must be the cause, whatever memories that should be there probably ones she doesn't want to see.

Rhea holds up a hand, slender fingers wreathed in bandages. "You weren't you." She approaches then, touching Edelgard's shoulder as she passes where the girl still sleeps. She settles on the side of the bed, facing her. "The poison was potent," she begins and Byleth finally pushes herself to sit up, cringing at the pain that stabs in her side. "For a while you where delirious with fever and didn't recognize anyone around you."

"Did I...?" she trails off, fingers knotting in the sheets at her waist. "I attacked you, didn't I? I could see the way you watching me. You're still doing it now." She could see the line of tension in the Archbishop's body, the way her eyes flickered each time Byleth moved, ready to react.

It made her realize Rhea really was more than just a holy woman, she was a warrior.

A warrior she had seen the shadow of several times before.

"You did," Rhea affirms. "and you attacked your house leader." Her eyes jump to Edelgard. "She went to check on you and you nearly strangled her." The guilt hits hard, sinking to a cold pit in her stomach, but she appreciates Rhea's honesty and the quiet, flat way she delivers it.

"Oh." This time there's no figure there to mock her.

"Professor?" 

_And yet._

Her eyes fall on Edelgard, now awake, still unsure. "Hey," she says, holding out a hand and watching as Edelgard comes to her, slow and hesitant, blanket left laying half on the floor. Rhea moves and Edelgard takes her place, hand resting lightly atop her own. The glove is a pristine white, not even a smudge of dirt on it. "I'm so sorry, Edelgard."

The younger girl blinks, then smiles, wavering but genuine. "No need to apologize, my teacher. If anything it was my own fault, lady Catherine warned me not to linger and I did anyway."

"Did she-"

"Yes."

She makes a note to thank Catherine later.

"Edelgard," Rhea murmurs from nearby with a gentle smile, "we should let the Professor rest more." She doesn't want to, fearing the figure on the throne will still haunt her dreams, but she can feel the exhaustion still weighing on her, knows that she'll never recover if she doesn't.

Though now she knows, so she watches as they leave, Rhea with a quiet promise to bring something to eat and drink back with her when she returns later. The door clicks shut and she settles back down, letting the hiss of the fire lull her back to sleep.

But not before a shadow passes, bloodstained hands reaching.

_My dear, dear teacher._

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on [Tumblr](http://dikhotomia.tumblr.com/) and or [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/modulatechaos)


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